


Law of Obligations: Contracts, Restitution, Tort

by yikesola



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2011, Anxiety, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Panic Attack, University woes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-16 08:14:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18090713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yikesola/pseuds/yikesola
Summary: He can’t think, he can’t breathe, it’s all too much. He’s feeling too much. He’s feeling everything. It’s all too fucking much. God, it’s a terrible neurotic contrast to those grey patches of time where he can’t feel anything at all. He has no idea how to bear it.A fic about panic attacks and academic stress.





	Law of Obligations: Contracts, Restitution, Tort

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ahappyphil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahappyphil/gifts).



He can’t do this. Why the hell did he think he could do this? He can’t focus, he can’t think— he’s forgotten how to read.

If his body wasn’t taking care of breathing for him, he’s pretty sure he’d fuck that up somehow. And even his body isn’t doing such a great job at the whole breathing thing; he can hear his ragged attempts at it echoing in his ears.

Are the walls somehow more prison-like than ever?

He can’t remember but he thinks the cracks in the plastered ceiling are longer than they were this morning. Than they were ten minutes ago. Maybe if he watches them for another ten minutes he’ll see them spindle further.

His laptop is hot on his stomach as he lays in his tiny, tiny bed with his neck propped up on too many pillows and sure to kink. It’s also letting out a brutal sound along with its blaring fan, as close to overheating and shutting down as Dan is. The glow of the screen is blinding. And the words are jumbled messes, black blurs that he can’t make out even though he knows they’re telling him something important about _law of obligations: contract, restitution, tort_.

His phone buzzes somewhere among his pillows and seems to jolt Dan out of whatever unnerved mantra of “can’t do this, can’t do this, can’t do this” had been running through his head.

Now the room seems eerily quiet without whatever buzzing his own brain had been producing. Even the fan on his overheating laptop quiets down when he slams it shut and rolls onto his side to find his phone.

It was a text from Phil. It was a couple of texts from Phil. He’s not sure how he didn’t notice the earlier ones, but he must’ve been spiraling harder than he realised.

“ _saw the FLUFFIEST sheepdog near the shops today *-* nearly stole him, he was one gigantic fluff_ ”

“ _I think I’d run a sheep farm just for the doggo tbh :D_ ”

“ _would you run a sheep farm w/ me danny? you could practice law for all our farmer neighbours and I could edit videos of our sheepdog herding <3_”

“ _I’m willing to assume you’re ignoring me bc you’re actually studying…_ ”

“ _in which case, I guess I have to be proud of you :3_ ”

“ _but also… ily so call me when you come up for air!_ ”

Then finally, the most recent message after a very patient gap, the one that had jolted Dan at last, “ _making bolognaise ^-^ mmm delicious bolognaise! but what’s this??? oh dear, I seem to have made too much for one person. If only someone would hop on a bus and help me out of this jam D:_ ”

Dan felt a flood of warmth go through him as he read Phil’s texts, spreading through his numb dumb limbs that haven’t done much of anything that day. He smiles as he texts back, “ _is it jam or bolognaise? O-o_ ”

“ _it’s whatever gets you over here, Howell <3_”

He’s sat on a bus seven minutes later with an overnight bag of performativity— he needn’t have brought it at all, but would have felt unprepared without it. The change of clothes is unnecessary, as he and Phil swap often enough as it is. The toothbrush is unnecessary, as he’s had a spare at Phil’s place since back when he was visiting Phil at his parent’s house instead of at his own Manchester apartment. The textbooks he’d shoved in at the last minute are unnecessary, as he’s not likely to spend any time around Phil bothering to study no matter what he tells himself.

He had hoped that the travel to Phil’s would calm him down. But something about the cold night air becoming warm and close once on board the bus, and the flashing lights of Manchester passing the condensation covered windows, and the thump-thump of the wheels that refused to make a regular rhythm because of the different dips of the road beneath him kept his nerves on edge. Building— building.

When he drops his backpack near the pile of shoes by Phil’s door, it lands with a thud as his heavy textbooks rattling on about _law of obligations: contract, restitution, tort_ use all the force gravity can give.

The thump alerts Phil of his presence, he assumes because of the yelp that sounds on the other side of the thin partition that serves to separate the kitchen from the rest of the small space.

Phil comes around the corner with a smile as warm as Dan has ever seen it and wraps his arms around him in a hug. Dan sinks into it, his arms around Phil as well and his forehead leaning on his broad shoulder. He’s almost holding his breath. He’s almost terrified of anything outside of this moment.

He hadn’t seen Phil since Wednesday, three whole days due to his realisation that he’d fallen too far behind on schoolwork and needed to catch up on his stupid readings for his stupid exams that were coming up and his stupid essays due soon that were meant to be 20-25 stupid pages each.

He spent the three days dragging his feet and getting _some_ work done… but not _much_ work done. Not enough.

And it all lead to this moment here being held by Phil where all he can do is think _law of obligations: contract, restitution, tort_ and nothing else, nothing of substance, nothing that matters— he can’t think, he can’t breathe, it’s all too much.

He’s feeling too much. He’s feeling everything. It’s all too fucking much.

God, it’s a terrible neurotic contrast to those grey patches of time where he can’t feel anything at all. He has no idea how to bear it.

“Hey now,” Phil says, pulling back and looking at him with a worried crease in his brow that Dan can barely make out through his tunneled vision. When the hell did his vision go tunneled? Great. On top of everything else, he’s going blind. “Hey,” he says, “you alright?”

“I’m—” he starts before his uneven breathing takes over and cuts him off. Phil’s hand moves up to wipe some tears off Dan’s cheek and that’s how he realises that he’s begun to cry.

“What is it, Dan?” Phil asks, and even through the alarm bells going off in Dan’s head he can hear Phil worry. Fuck. _Fuck_ — he’s worrying Phil, he’s ruining this, he’s ruining this like he’s ruining uni and his entire fucking life and he just can’t do this… why the _hell_ did he think he could do this?!

“I’m…” he tries again, “Phil I’m, like, freaking out.” He shakes his head.

“I’ll say,” Phil pulls him tight against his chest again. “Here, come on.”

They take the short number of steps to the sofa; nothing’s all that far away in a flat this size. Phil sits him down and puts a hand on his back between his shoulder blades. God, that’s already doing Dan a world of good, he thinks.

“Could you breathe for me, Dan?” Phil asks. “Deep ones? Together?”

Dan tries, he really tries. The tears are coming in a steady stream now that he’s aware of them though, and they’re kind of choking him along with everything else.

“Hey, babe, hey,” he hears Phil’s voice like he’s on the other side of a glass wall or something. “What colour is my shirt?”

“What?”

“Could you say it out loud for me? What colour is my shirt?”

“It’s, er,” Dan tries to clear his throat though it feels like he’s got a noose around it, “it’s red.”

“Yep,” Phil nods. “What about yours? What colour is your shirt.”

Dan looks down. “Black.”

“Good,” Phil nods again. “What colour is the sofa?”

“…also black.”

He points to his bookshelf. “What colour is the Pikachu plushie?”

Dan’s been terrified this whole while that he’s losing his mind, but now he’s pretty darn convinced that Phil has too. Still, he keeps going with it. He lets out a shaky breath. “Yellow.”

“Mm-hmm, and what colour is my hoodie?” he points to his old York hoodie draped over the arm of the sofa.

“Green.”

Phil keeps asking and Dan keeps answering for a handful of minutes. As he does, Dan hears Phil’s voice a little clearer each question and manages some proper breaths until Phil’s just nodding and breathing with him. Then he notices that his tears have stopped. Phil leans over to kiss his forehead. He’s still rubbing Dan’s back between the shoulder blades.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Dan says after the ringing in his ears has lessened. “What the fuck was that?”

“That was a bona fide panic attack, babe,” Phil says, “or sure looked like one, anyway.”

“Seriously?” Dan bent forward to drop his face in his hands, but he found they were clammy and shaking and he didn’t want them anywhere near his face after all.

“Yeah, looked a lot like the ones I used to get after my... after that friend...”

“Oh,” Dan nodded, “yeah? That where you learned that bloody colour shit?”

Phil laughs, a relieved sort of laugh, the kind that’s mostly exhale. “Sure was. Always helped. How you feeling now?”

Dan isn’t entirely sure. He feels like he’s just run a marathon, and that’s stupid as he’s never run anything close to a marathon in is life, but he does. Now that the tension that had strung him together all day had dissipated, now that it wasn’t connecting his bones or flying through his veins, he just felt... drained. Empty. A shell.

Was this...calm? It didn’t feel calm.

He shrugs. Phil stands to get him something to drink. He gulps down the water so fast he starts choking on it, but it still helps.

“A panic attack,” he says, shaking his head after wiping his mouth.

“My doctor also called it an anxiety attack too, because it isn’t sometimes like” Phil waves his arms around theatrically, “like _panic_!”

Dan nodded.

“Wanna talk about it?” Phil says, though Dan figures he’s worried Phil enough that he’ll talk about it whether he wants to or not.

He leans over into the crook of Phil’s body. It’s warm here. It’s safe here. It feels like he’s less likely to panic here.

“It just felt like... everything. All at once. Like, I just don’t think I can do it.”

“Are you afraid of telling me you don’t want to run a sheep farm together?” Phil says, and even with his face buried in Phil’s chest, Dan can still hear the smile in his question. “Because the romance of the plan had faded for me. You’re off the hook.”

“That’s a shame. Aside from the part where I practice law for our fellow farmers that sounded nice.”

“Really?” Phil says. “School that bad?”

“It’s kicking my ass, Phil.”

“It’s hard, it’s meant to be hard,” Phil says. “It’s law at University of Manchester! You got in because you’re so, so smart. Because you can handle it.”

Dan shakes his head. He’s not so sure. He’s less and less sure of anything lately.

“What were you working on before I bribed you over here with dinner?”

“Speaking of which?” Dan prompts when his stomach takes this opportune moment to rumble. Phil laughs and they stand and plate up their pasta.

“You eat at all today?” Phil asks when he notices the ravenous bites Dan’s taking. The drained feeling came with the carbo load marathon runners are into, apparently.

He shrugs. He’s not sure. He can’t remember. A lot of the day is a blur, and he’s chalking that up to the apparent panic attack he’s had.

“What were you doing instead?” Phil is apparently determined to steer the conversation back to uni, even if Dan can feel the alarm bells waiting in his peripheral vision waiting to go off again.

“ _Law of obligations: contract, restitution, tort_ ,” he says.

Phil laughs. “No wonder your brain melted!”

“Is that technically what happened?”

“I’m the expert, aren’t I?”

“Now that you mention it, your brain being melted explains _a lot_.” That bant earns Dan a shove on the shoulder and a laugh which he mirrors. It also earns him the first proper kiss of the evening once they set their plates aside. Phil is warm and grounding and Dan’s still feeling like a cardboard cutout of himself, but he’s world and worlds better than when he first stepped through Phil’s door.

“Maybe I should distract you from uni if it’s distressing you so much,” Phil says as he moves from Dan’s lips to Dan’s cheeks to Dan’s chin. “If you’re up for it? If you’re feeling alright?”

Dan nods, pulling Phil back in for another kiss. Fuck, yes, absolutely, please— he needs his mind wiped clean of everything except Phil, Phil, Phil.

But then the pattern of his heartbeat echoes in the blood rushing through his ears, and it’s unsettling. It’s not the heartbeat he’s known all his life, even when nervous or afraid.

“Wait,” he says, uncomfortable because his breath has gone ragged again even for a completely different reason this time. “Wait, sorry, I’m still feeling...” he waves his hands vaguely and hopes Phil gets what he means.

He isn’t at all surprised when Phil does. Phil nods, Phil kisses the top of his head gently, Phil’s breathing matches his and helps slow them both.

Fuck, he’s good at that. Why didn’t Dan know he’s so good at that? Sometimes he thinks he knows Phil down to his cells and sometimes he still surprises him. He hopes both feelings last them decades.

They curl up in Phil’s bed not much later, because Dan’s not sure he’s ever been so tired in his life. Phil whispers about uni and how smart he knows Dan is and how he’s sure Dan can do this while they drift off wrapped up in one another because Dan thought he’d lose his mind again if he couldn’t feel Phil’s skin on his skin.

He wakes up feeling more like himself, more like his body belongs to him, more like whatever took it over yesterday was an embarrassing overdramatic entity that he wants nothing more to do with.

He lets Phil distract him properly as they wake in a way he couldn’t commit to last night. With their hands on one another, and their mouths following their hands, and their ragged breaths still matching but this time not at all terrifyingly. The moment of his orgasm is the first moment of clarity he thinks he’s hit in days. There’s nothing— there’s nothing but ascension and the taste of Phil still on him and his body operating the way it’s meant to.

They shower, they eat cereal, and Dan looks at his untouched overnight bag.

Untouched because he’s wearing Phil’s dark green polo and a pair of grey sweats. Untouched because the toothbrush he’d used is the one that sits in the same cup as Phil’s. Untouched because the weight of his textbooks seems so heavy he’s sure it’ll break his ribs.

It’s too much again. Fuck. Why is it always too much?

He goes to pull out the textbooks and the loose scribbled notes he’d taken on the rare occasions he’d made it to class. Phil watches him but doesn’t say anything even if he looks ready to.

Dan holds up one of the pages of notes. His handwriting is a mess under the best circumstances. Right now, he can’t read a fucking thing. He wants to ball it up and throw it across the room. He wants to tear the books apart page by page.

But he knows once he remembers he _can_ read after all, he’s gonna need them.

Because he needs to do this. And Phil’s right... he _can_ do this. It feels like he can’t and that’s all that’s been running in his head, but he knows that logically, yes. He can do this.

It’s just...

Maybe...

Maybe he doesn’t _want_ to. And maybe that’s a different thing entirely from whether he can or not.

“More _law of obligations_?” Phil asks.

Dan nods. There’s such a thick lump in his throat he’s afraid to speak.

 _Wanting_ to be a lawyer never… it was never part of the equation. It didn’t— it didn’t matter. Would he be good at it, would it pay well, would it be impressive. Those were the only boxes he’d bothered ticking when he barreled ahead down this road.

“Y’know,” Phil says, scooting closer, smiling crooked, “maybe you have more of an obligation to enjoying your weekend than you do to law.”

Dan manages a laugh. “What about the _contract, restitution, tort_?”

“We’ve gotta contract someone for some takeaway for lunch,” Phil says.

“Contract or contact?”

“And I’m not sure I’ve given you adequate restitution for this morning, if I’m being honest. Feel I might’ve been holding back.”

Dan can feel the grin breaking across his face. “And tort?”

“I’ll tort your mum!”

“You will _not_ ,” Dan laughs. They both laugh. It’s the best he’s felt in ages.

He still has weeks before his exams which he’s not at all sure he’ll manage to squeak through. He still has years before he’s through with his degree. It’s a lot. It’s a long stretch ahead of him that all feels like too fucking much.

But he also still has a day left in his weekend. And he has a few hours left of the morning. And he has Phil right here beside him.

Maybe this uninvited thought of whether or not he _can_ do this and whether or not he _wants_ to do this doesn’t have to matter right now. Maybe that’s a question he can answer later.

Maybe all he needs to do is kick Phil’s ass at _Mario Kart_ and wait on that promised takeaway.

Sure, it looks a lot like that procrastination he’s known for. But maybe he also just deserves a break. A chance to catch his breath. Before he has to sit shaking on Phil’s sofa again calling out the colours of the different things he points to. Right now, while he’s not feeling everything, while he’s not feeling nothing— while his legs are draped over Phil’s and his hair is still an unstraightened mop the way Phil says he loves it.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/183411256794/law-of-obligations-contracts-restitution-tort) !


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